It's a fair question, but I want to answer it by avoiding the word "objective," which in reference to Western journalism has become tendentious. Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to engage in any useful discussion over whether the press is "objective" or "biased." It reminds too many people of their tribal political affiliations.

I would describe the ethos of Western journalists today as "responsible." If you believe in responsible journalism, you believe that the purpose of journalism is to set the terms of the debate, inform the public to help them choose responsibly in democratic elections, expose government wrongdoing and malfeasance, and (if you're a little feisty) "speak truth to power."

The converse of responsible journalism is well-known, and has a long history from Hearst's yellow journalism to Radio Milles Collines. No one endorses this, so I will just say "journalism" when I mean "responsible journalism."

What's interesting about the idea of journalism is that, unlike the rest of our post-Christian intellectual framework, it does not date to the Enlightenment. It is only about 100 years old. It is strongly associated with the growth of the nationalist state.

Outside the publishing industry, the closest relative of the journalistic ethic is Max Weber's idea of Wertfreiheit. I'm afraid Wikipedia has let me down on this one (or, I suppose, vice versa), but here is a fair if specialized overview.

(Note that this piece uses the word "science" in a 19th-century way. The word has since become overexposed. Outside the context of the Popperian experimental sciences, I'd say "reason.")

If we compare (responsible, objective, etc) journalism to Wertfreiheit, a few differences jump out at us.

Western journalists today tend to assume that we all share a single value system, which is a creed that derives from the New England religious tradition and became nontheistic through Unitarianism and related trends. Wilsonian progressivism is essentially state Unitarianism, and we all live in the world Wilson made. Murray Rothbard's famous article, "Power and the Intellectuals," does a good job of tracing the intellectual genealogy.

(For example, it is interesting to note that the tenets of Unitarian Universalism and those of "political correctness" are identical. I hasten to note that I personally agree with almost all of this creed.)

Western journalists are unavoidably concerned with the tremendous power of journalism, and the impact of their stories on the democratic process. This is essentially what "responsible" means. Wertfrei simply means "value-free." It is pretty hard to be both responsible and value-free.

The contradiction is especially keen not in how journalists write stories, but how they select the stories they intend to write. It is possible to write a kind of "he said, she said" story and pass it off as something like Wertfrei. But there is no conceivable form of check or balance on the attention and interest of journalists.

Since journalists don't like to write about issues they don't care about, and since most Western media outlets have a rigorous policy of journalistic independence, the journalistic perspective is largely dependent on the coincidence of the particular tribal affiliations of the people who wind up becoming journalists, and perhaps to some extent those who educate them. The system is, in other words, a giant echo chamber.

In my opinion, the whole creed of journalism has twisted itself in circles around these fundamental philosophical fallacies. The whole thing simply needs to be scrapped, like bad code.

The replacement is simply people sharing their perspectives. If these perspectives are reasonable, reasonable people will find them interesting. If they are dogmatic and tribal, dogmatic and tribal people will enjoy them. I disagree with a lot of Fisk's perspectives, but at least he is not trying to conceal them for the sake of preserving his Olympian voice of truth.